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Monday, September 3, 2012

Burning Magnesium, The Worst Sunburn of My Life, and Sushi.

It's been just about a week since classes started, and I'm happy to say my sophomore year is off to a good start. I was busy running around last week, getting papers signed, adding classes, switching this and that, buying books and other things, as well as trying to not get behind in the first five days. So, although I've been pretty busy, I'm happy and occupied.

I've decided that, given the events in my life in the last week, it would be cool to accentuate my first real week back with three things. The first: burning magnesium.

This semester, I'm in an Intro to Chem class with Prof. Moffett (whom I highly recommend), and on Friday we had an exciting lecture when she burned magnesium at the front of the class.

It almost looks like something out of Harry Potter, no?

Originally, I was going to include a video that I took in class (with permission ;p), but I forgot that video from my phone doesn't typically upload to blogger very well. Nonetheless, it was an exciting Friday and as you can see here, Magnesium burns bright.

The second aspect of my first week of school was the sea kayaking trip I did Saturday on Lake Champlain with the Wilderness Program. It was a great trip, and fellow blogger Boates went along as well.

Boates with boats. Hehe.

I learned a lot about kayaking that I didn't even know could be learned; for example, there is, in fact, a way to steer a kayak. It's also very easy to tip kayaks over, as I learned four times. It's also very easy to get a terrible sunburn while kayaking in the hot summer sun when you fall into the lake four times and forget to reapply sunscreen.

Me, after sunburn.

But in spite of the sunburn it was still a good trip, and now I've learned that you can use white vinegar to treat a bad sunburn if you don't have aloe. But you will smell like a potato chip.

Finally, the third aspect of my life which accentuates my first week back was today, at the end of my Gender and International Development class, when we shared sushi with our Japanese cultural partners who, although they're here for three weeks mostly for English classes, helped us this past week with our first project of the semester. The project was about gender constructs in Japan and the rest of the world, and it entailed watching a Japanese movie (Train Man), conducting an interview, and finally a written component. I found it to be a really fun project, as well as a great learning experience, and I'm hoping our Japanese partners enjoyed it as much as I did!